not goofing off

What I’m working on right now is getting paint off the tiles in the bathroom, in the long process of getting ready to paint, which is taking far longer than the actual painting job will.

We have a decorative frieze of tiles at the top of the tiles on the lower half of the walls. (It’s painted-over wallpaper above that. *sigh*) Someone had painted the top of the tiles, letting it slop over onto the front of the tiles. (Whoever had grouted the tiling had also not wiped all the grouting out of the pattern in the tile. I’m trying to be charitable and think that perhaps they did it at night and couldn’t see the grouting in the pattern, which I am now scraping and chipping out of the pattern with a putty knife.)

It looks like this:

I tried scraping some of the paint off the top with a putty knife, thinking that someone had simply slopped paint onto the top of the tile and then just carried on with it.

No, no. They used tile that’s not meant to be used as an edge. So the edge is unfinished and so they painted it. Possibly a cost cutting measure. Okay, fine. So now I just had to take the paint off the front of the tile.

Now, in the States, I’d be using a product called Goof Off to get the extra paint off. This doesn’t seem to be available, the salesman didn’t think anything like that was made in the UK. “Maybe it’s only in the States?” We persevered and finally found a Graffiti Remover from HG.

It does the trick!

It’s a gel, which is great because it means it stays pretty much where I put it – important in this case because I don’t want it getting into the wallpaper adjacent to the tile. (Also, worth mentioning it’s cheaper at my local hardware store than on Amazon.)

I’m going to have a ton left over; a little goes a very long way. I may have to go find some graffiti somewhere to remove.

It is perhaps worth noting that when I asked J if I was being too fussy, he smiled, said, “it bothers you,” and then added, “I think most other people would just figure it’s someone’s bathroom.”

This was a very informative post till the end. J’s comment has me laughing b/c I can actually imagine that little exchange taking place!

Also have this image of you sneaky around the city after dark removing graffiti like some sort of domestic superhero. Instead of a dark cape you could wear dark gloves and they could all point and shout “who was that gloved woman?”